Recursion Review
Title: Recursion
Author: Blake Crouch
Date Purchased: 11/29/2019
Price Paid: $3.17
Date Finished: 10/20/2021
Rating: 3/5
I’ve come to think of Blake Crouch as an author that will write some fairly decent sci-fi that will often have some sort of twist or left turn that the reader doesn’t see coming. I’ve read his “Pines” trilogy, and previously read Dark Matter for this blog. I’ve enjoyed all of those books quite a bit and was looking forward to reading Recursion.
This was a tough review to write as I both liked and didn’t like this book. As I was reading through things never got bad enough that I was tempted to invoke Rule Three, which is good. But I often felt myself dreading some of the upcoming chapters, and was glad when it was over. I’m going to spoil the hell out of this one so, you know, proceed with caution.
Primarily, Recursion is about time travel…at least traveling back to the past. A scientist comes up with a way to travel back in time using memories and from there we get a very dense setting involving divergent timelines, multiverses, and other science fiction jargon. All of which was fairly interesting to read about and had me pretty involved as a reader.
Where he lost me, and I’m sure this is a “me thing”, was when Crouch really started getting into the darker side of time travel and how it effected everyone.
Let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me sum up.
As someone travels back in time they create a new timeline and a new reality. Things are fine until their “new” timeline catches up with the “original” timeline. Then a slew of people wind up getting false memories which are actually memories from the original timeline bleeding through. Again, a neat concept. But the execution was really off-putting for me. There are multiple instances of mass suicides, nuclear warfare, cataclysmic events…you name it, we probably get it as time starts to unravel.
This could be a product of where I’m at in my life. My wife and I are expecting our first child in a few weeks and there’s a lot of inherent hope and promise that comes along with bringing a new human into the world. So I’m kinda in a positive mindset and trying to focus on the good things. This book? Woof. There’s not a ton of good in there for quite a while.
So maybe the book is fine. Maybe it’s even more well written than I thought to provoke this reaction from me. Or maybe I’m just changing. Who knows?
Final Thoughts: Not a bad book, per se, just not for me right now.